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Don't miss out on the greatest content opportunity I've ever seen

Don't miss out on the greatest content opportunity I've ever seen

Plus: LinkedIn Short-Form Video, Phantombuster, Winning Content Formats

Kane Kallaway
October 15, 2024

Welcome to Content Dept.

This newsletter is designed to give you a marketing edge.

Each week, I break down top 1% content and share the most important marketing learnings/trends that will help grow your business faster.

TODAY’S TOPICS:

🚀 | LinkedIn Short-Form Video (the greatest content opportunity I’ve ever seen)

⚙️ | Best LinkedIn Automation Tool (Phantombuster)

👀 | Winning Content Formats for Brands

LINKEDIN SHORTS

LinkedIn Shorts

I’ll cut to the chase…LinkedIn short-form video is the greatest content opportunity I’ve ever seen.

If you’re trying to grow a personal brand or a drive leads for business, this is something you cannot ignore.

What makes it so great?

If I gave you the chance to go back to YouTube in the early 2010s or Tiktok/IG Reels in 2020 and let you start post content in those eras, would you?

Of course you would.

And the biggest reason is because there was a massive supply and demand mismatch.

During those eras, there wasn’t enough high quality content to serve the millions of people that wanted it.

And whenever there is a supply and demand mismatch (more attention demanded than content supply to feed it), the early adopting creators grow extremely quickly, establish authority much more easily, and drive endless leads to their business.

This early advantage then sticks and compounds as the platforms become more mature.

As a marketer or growth person, your primary job is to find and take advantage of these opportunities.

LinkedIn short-form video is going through this “golden period” right now…and because it’s LinkedIn, the weight of that authority, the power of that influence, and the value of those leads is 10-100x more desirable than any other platform.

As a proof point, I started posting short-form videos on LinkedIn 3 months ago.

During that time, I’ve generated 53M impressions, grew my following from <2K to 13.3K followers, drove thousands of email sign-ups, and hundreds of qualified leads for my business.

The numbers are staggering.

And this was all as the short-form video feed was rolled out as a beta program to only 10% of LinkedIn users. All while crossposting the videos I was already making.

So by now you probably get it…

Being active with LinkedIn short-form video is something you can’t afford to ignore…the opportunity is just too big.

So how can you take advantage?

Well, it’s your lucky day because in this post I’m going to break down:

The 4 biggest reasons why LinkedIn short-form is a generational opportunity
The tactical playbook for getting started (what to make, how to post, etc.)
How to turn views into dollars (metrics, ramps, funnels, etc.)

After reading this (and watching the companion video), you’ll have everything you need to dominate LinkedIn short-form video.

What is LinkedIn Shorts?

Before I get into the breakdown, let me quickly level set on what exactly is happening on LinkedIn with short-form video.

LinkedIn sat back and watched TikTok’s vertical “For You” feed absolutely take over the social media zeitgeist in 2020.

As we know, Instagram quickly followed suit with Reels, YouTube launched Shorts, Snapchat launched Spotlight, Facebook launched Reels, etc.

Every social platform now has a vertical video feed that is algorithmically designed to serve you short-form videos from people you don’t already follow.

And this is huge as a creator because these vertical videos are being actively pushed (for free) to millions of new potential followers. From my experience so far, the reach is 10-100x bigger than text only posts.

It’d be like if you put your face on a billboard in Times Square, but the state of NY paid to fly millions of tourists into the city so they would see it. It’s free traffic on the most absurd of scales.

LinkedIn Shorts is the short-form, “For You” style video feed, on LinkedIn.

Over the past few months, they have been beta testing this feature and slow rolled it out to 10% of LinkedIn users (~13M of the 130M total users).

This video feed will live in a separate tab (the second from the left in your mobile nav bar). If you don’t yet see it, it’s because it hasn’t been rolled out to you yet as a user.

The hack during this initial rollout, is that even though you don’t have access to view the feed, posting any short-form video in the normal post window would automatically get fed into the vertical feed.

4 reasons why LinkedIn short-form is a generational opportunity

I believe LinkedIn short-form, if taken advantage of, could be even more valuable than Instagram, Tiktok, or any other vertical short-form platform.

Here are the 4 reasons why:

💨 | Timing Tailwinds: As I mentioned above, the best marketing ROI comes during periods of massive supply <> demand mismatches. The earlier you are, and the bigger the mismatch, the better the return on unit effort. In this case, LinkedIn is uniquely suited to provide a massive ROI because there are already 130M professionals that use it daily. In Tiktok’s case, the network of users had to scale from zero, so while being early was helpful, there weren’t as many eyes demanding content initially. LinkedIn is different because the platform is already mature and used to consuming. This means your stuff will start working right away
👀 | LinkedIn Users Seek Great Content to Share: On all other social platforms, the default user behavior is to just consume. Users will share their favorite content with friends, but the vast majority want to consume in silence. Because of this, “going viral” is much harder because you’re relying on shares (a non-dominant user behavior). But LinkedIn is completely the opposite. Because LinkedIn is seen as a professional content experience, users are actively looking for compelling content to share, because this earns them professional credibility. This means that sharing is a primary user action, and it will be easier for things to go viral. Virality = more ROI on unit work spent
✅ | LinkedIn is Verified Only: Most social platforms are full of bots and fake accounts. This is because the sign-up process is easy to game at scale and there is little to no human verification process. As a professional network, LinkedIn has much stricter sign-up guidelines and makes it harder to create mass bot pages at scale. Because of this, the traction from your content engagement is a much clearer signal for what’s resonating. Said another way, if 90% of the engagement is from humans, you can most easily understand what is actually working vs being gamed
🏢 | Return to Work: By nature, LinkedIn is seen as a professional tool. Most other social platforms are seen as a distraction. As hundreds of millions of employees return to work in person, they are basically held captive in an office for 10 hours per day where they can only consume content on LinkedIn. This means a disproportionate of “social media consumption time” will shift towards LinkedIn during the work day

The combination of these factors make this an insane opportunity.

How to tactically take advantage of LinkedIn short-form video:

Right off the bat, and this is obvious, if you want to take advantage of LinkedIn Shorts, you have to make short-form videos.

Fortunately, I am one of the most well known short-form “business creators” on the internet. So my goal is to try and give you the answer for exactly what to do.

First, a couple of free resources that will help you:

My LinkedIn Shorts Video Breakdown - this is the companion YouTube video I made to go with this newsletter. I keep mentioning it because it’s a bit more visual and does a better job of showing examples. In general, my content/marketing YouTube channel will be the best resource in the world for learning how to go from 0 → 100 with short-form video
WavyWorld - I made a free course and community dedicated specifically to learning short-form video. It includes videos on coming up with topics, editing, scripting, posting, as well as a couple live case studies of me showing my process

I’m also going to break down some quick advice for getting started here…

First question, are you already making short-form videos?

If Yes, read the green question below
If No, skip to the red statement below

If you said said yes, are your short-form videos related to business in any way?

If you are making short-form videos that are related to business, you should be cross posting these on LinkedIn daily. Some quick posting tips:

Text Captions: I like to rehash most of the video script in the text caption plus add a few extra facts/details that I couldn’t fit in the video. LinkedIn only shows the first 1-2 lines “above the fold” so these need to be compelling. This might be all the user sees when they come across your post
Links: Do not include links/URLs in your caption post. I find LinkedIn will throttle the video if you do this. Make sure to toggle on your “Creator Button” for your profile and include any CTAs in there. Watch starting at 7:18 to see what I mean here
Profile Tag Link: At the bottom of the caption, I like to include a line asking viewers to make sure to follow my profile if they want more content like this. “Following” is not an intuitive action on LinkedIn (most people are used to Connecting), so they need to be nudged to follow. If you want to see what I mean, go to my profile and look at my posts
Timing and Frequency: I try to post in the AM on weekdays, ideally 1-2x per day
Hashtags: I like to include 5 hashtags at the bottom, typically broad and related to the video

If you are making short-form videos but they are not currently related to business at all, you have 3 options:

Don’t post on LinkedIn: You could decide to just keep doing what you’re doing on other platforms, not change your content at all, and not post on LinkedIn. I wouldn’t advise this given the size of the opportunity, but you may go this route if the content you currently make is a) gen pop focused, b) crushing elsewhere and c) you don’t have the capacity or resources to make multiple types of content
Adjust your current content to have a business lens: There’s no hard rule on LinkedIn that disqualifies gen pop content, but I’ve found my best performing videos (that drive followers & leads) are ones that have business value. Again, this is because business users are looking for professional credibility and this comes when they can repost content of business value. If you already make high performing videos, you can try to sneak in a “business relevant” frame or bit at the end of the video. I did this pretty well in this example, where I talked about a gen pop concept for the first half and then broke down how the business works in the second half.
Make two types of content: If your non-business content is already crushing, then another approach is to let it keep working and add in a completely separate set of content made for LinkedIn. This is optimal, but obviously takes extra time and/or resources to make happen

If you said no, don’t worry, here’s how I would tackle it:

Formats: The good news is, the bar will never be lower for what “good” looks like on LinkedIn. There are many different types of content you can try making.

My standard style looks fairly highly produced, but I’ve also experimented with iPhone handheld walking videos that have gotten upwards of 500K views in some cases. You can see both on my LinkedIn profile. The hit rate for these will be lower, but it’s a much lower bar to get started.

Here’s what I’d start with:

💡 | Write down a list of 10 topics (either concepts or news events that are related to your job or space)
📝 | Jot down a few sentences around your take or perspective on these things
🤳🏻 | Hold out your iPhone and record yourself talking about one of them. Record on 4K 24fps, and make sure you are near a window or natural light source. The truth is, with video, the camera doesn’t matter (most smart phones are good enough), it’s the light source that matters most. You want the light coming through the window to be shining on your face (so you’re looking at the window), and ideally when the sun is least harsh (either on a cloudy day, morning or evening)
🗣️ | When you record, talk clearly, quickly, and with high energy. Try to remove any fluff or unnecessary jargon. If you mess up, it’s fine. You don’t need to record in one take if you’re okay with light editing. If you don’t want to edit at all, write your script more word for word and try to deliver it naturally. Small mess ups are fine, it humanizes you, just try to avoid long pauses. Treat the camera like a friend, not like you’re talking to an audience. Say words like “you” vs “they”
📽️ | Once you’re finished recording, upload into Capcut (you can download the app for free), go to “Captions” and then select a style you like (some of the captions styles require a premium account for $9/month)
🎯 | Export the video from Capcut and upload to LinkedIn

This is the easiest way to get started. Try to get your first 10 posted in the first 2 weeks so you can build momentum and get comfortable with talking to the camera.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are many more advanced formats (e.g., greenscreen, split screen, fully animated, etc.) but that shouldn’t be your focus initially.

Your only goal in the beginning is to build the consistent habit and learn to clearly articulate your thoughts in a package that works for short-form content. This will take you from 0 → 1

Once you solve for this, I’m working on a few things that will help you go from 1→100:

Sandcastles - this is an AI storyteller that will take your video topic and automatically write a banger short-form script for you (using all of the advanced tactics I’ve learned). If you think this could help you, sign up for the waitlist
Secret Project (TBA) - this will be to help max accelerate creators. Stay tuned for this because space will be limited
Editors - if you want to improve the editing of your videos, I have an amazing team that has a few more editors available (first come, first serve). They edit all of my videos. If this is something you’re looking for, reply to this email

Truthfully, there are enough free video tutorials in WavyWorld to get you started for the first few weeks.

If you’re past this point and need more help, reply to this email with any questions and I’ll do my best to answer.

How to turn LinkedIn views into leads:

It can be easy to fall into the trap of playing the views game.

As you start seeing videos perform well on LinkedIn, you’ll see some massive view counts.

But this is only the start of the process…because your goal is to turn those passive views into active leads.

I’ve figured out an automated system that works super well for turning views to leads on LinkedIn. I’ll walk through that below.

There are 3 funnel flows I’m looking for from LinkedIn Shorts:

LinkedIn Short Video → landing page signup (via Creator Button)
LinkedIn Short Video → newsletter signup (via Creator Button or pinned comment)
LinkedIn Short Video → Connect Request → Auto DM with Phantombuster → newsletter signup

The truth is, if you’re selling a product for more than $200, few will convert cold via the LinkedIn short-form. Your goal is to get them to sign up for a newsletter.

There are 4 ways you should be using to get someone to go from view to email subscriber:

At the bottom of the text post (below your reference to follow your LinkedIn profile), include a non-linked CTA driving someone to click your Creator Button. For me, this could be something like, “If you want to learn to make videos like this for your company, I write a free newsletter about content and marketing. Send me a Connect request and I’ll send it through”
In the comments for the post, also leave this message
Have these links already set up in your Creator button and easily accessible on your LinkedIn profile

Those are the first 3, but the absolute best way to do this is via a LinkedIn automation tool called Phantombuster.

I love this tool.

Think of Phantombuster like an always on virtual assistant that automatically sends messages for you.

They have tons of different preset automations that you can run on LinkedIn. The one that I use is called “LinkedIn Auto Invitation Accepter.”

Anytime anyone sends me a Connect request on LinkedIn, my Phantom will automatically accept their request and reply with a warm message nudging to subscribe to my newsletter.

And this absolutely crushes for growing an email list.

So the flow is:

Make as many short-form videos as you can
In the text description/caption of the video, nudge people to Connect with you (this is seen as less pushy than trying to have them subscribe right from the video)
When they send the Connect request, have Phantombuster auto accept and send them a message with whatever resource you’re trying to plug (I’d either use an email newsletter directly or a lead magnet that drives to the email newsletter)

If you do this enough, at scale, you’ll be adding hundreds to thousands of new email subscribers per week (for free).

Once they’re on your email list, you can drop them into a more intentional sales funnel from there.

Phantombuster is the best tool in the world for this.

The immeasurable benefits of LinkedIn Shorts:

One last thing…

Here’s how you should think about the other benefits that will come from posting consistently on LinkedIn Shorts and why it’s worth your time:

Incremental Credibility - most content consumers online are passive lurkers. They may not engage often, but they are seeing what you’re saying and beginning to trust you. This is building credibility by a thousand cuts…eventually people know you for that thing
Surface Area - Life is about increasing your surface area for luck and serendipity. The more content you make, the more opportunities you give others to brag about you to others. These share moments are what create lucky breaks
Personal Echo Effect - When you make content consistently, it feels like you’re everywhere. This creates an echo effect on the internet. You want this…this will fuel the credibility and the luck
Channel Warming - At some point in the next couple years, these short-form video platforms will figure out a monetization model to pay creators the same way that YouTube pays with Adsense. You want to be there when this happens.

If you read this whole thing, I can’t think of a single reason why you wouldn’t start on LinkedIn today. If you still have questions, shoot me an email reply.